Mix oxyclean with washing soda and soak your shirts in it for a few hours before putting them in the washing machine with Gain detergent.
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
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Better detergent. If you are not sure which, just try a few out until you find one that works. For me it was ariel powder that really made a difference (also easy to store and lasts a while)
Looked into this recently bc I felt like I couldn't get my ex's odor off my clothes. Based on my fav laundry guy (jeeves_ny) on IG, I found Persil and Ariel to be the answer. Feel like I smell like myself again after years.
Use spray on or gel deodorant. It helps a lot.
Saw a solution on the web somewhere that worked for me for colors (not whites, you will see why).
If you have stains already, I use a 50/50 of water and Tide Free and Clear in a spray bottle and I spray drench the stained area. Throw that in the washer and let it wait for wash day. Hours or days to let the Borax in it do its thing. Works great for oil stains too.
For straight up stank, like the mildew in the shoulder seams that will come out when you sweat, I use oxi in the tub with detergent, then cleaning strength vinegar (30%) in the fabric softener compartment (but not with whites and chlorine bleach, DON’T GENERATE CHLORINE GAS). Just like 2 or 3 tablespoons. You will smell it when YOU move the load to the dryer, but it mostly fades while it tumbles. The stank fades away every wash and is usually gone after 3. And it helps sanitize your washer between bleaches.
I wash my workout clothes on the roughest setting. Probably shortens the life of the clothes but gets the drink out.
I work out in sleeveless tops.
Had a friend who swore by ammonia for armpit stains on shirts, maybe try that?
Citric acid is dirt cheap and does wonders for some cleaning jobs. Many recommend vinegar for these things, but citric acid doesn't leave a smell and works for a lot of the same things. I guess anything acidic would do.
Vinegar and sodium bicarbonate, scrub a little and throw it in the washing machine. Let it rest for about 15 minutes before start washing.
OMG no, no NO!
Baking soda and vinegar mixed together do fucking NOTHING to clean anything! It never has and it never will! You make carbon dioxide gas and sodium acetate. Neither of which do dick for cleaning.
Stop fucking telling people to do this, it is 100% worthless!
If you want to do anything, buy some sodium percarbonate powder and add that to your laundry. It's the active ingredient of so-called "oxygen bleach". Sodium percarbonate is good at removing stains and yellowing from white clothes and helping to take the stink out of smelly laundry. For really nasty stuff, mix up a few tablespoons in a bucket with hot water and let your stuff soak for an hour and then throw it through the machine.
Either that or just spend a little more money on quality laundry detergent. Plain old Tide works quite well for most people. If you have a top load washer, set it so that it fills the tub to the max. Front loaders and super eco-friendly washers are fine for most people, but for those that work outside or do dirty things for a living, you need more water and soap to get your stuff clean.
Borax or 20 Mule Team are good if you have hard water since it softens and will prevent minerals in the water from binding to the detergent such that the detergent remains available for cleaning your laundry vs just getting wasted by hard water. It doesn't necessarily clean stuff on it's own, but it just makes the detergent you have more efficient, thusly why it is often called a "laundry booster". It does have some properties that do help clean, but it is most effective as a pH buffer.
If you have hard water and nasty laundry, you can indeed mix sodium percarbonate and borax with your regular detergent. Soften and condition the water with the borax, permit the detergent to be more effective and the sodium percarbonate (which turns into hydrogen peroxide in water) will oxidize the filth in your clothes to keep things from being dingy and smelly without chlorine bleach.
I have had some success with soaking in a solution of vinegar for min 20 minutes. And or oxy bleach, (not at the same time).
From my experience, it's from the deodorant, not sweat itself. Not sure the fix, but I know people have had varying success with their methods.
I'll second this. I smelled worse wearing antiperspirant than deodorant. I switched because antiperspirant gives me a rash, but it turns out i smell better with deodorant too.
I rub a bit of detergent in trouble spots when I take my clothes off. Works really well with blood too.
I also switched to a deodorant that doesn't leave marks on my clothes.
Just a heads up that laundry stripping will not remove antiperspirant stains. I'm going through this with my white undershirts and after doing a stripping treatment the shirts came out pristine except for the waxy buildup on the pits.
Is the issue the stains, or smell? If it’s the former, it’s likely your antiperspirant. Switching to non-aluminum deodorant avoids stains, but won’t prevent you from sweating. There are also “non-staining” antiperspirants, but I don’t know how effective they are.
If it’s lingering smells, probably try changing laundry detergents. You can maybe also try dabbing a little baking soda on the pits of your shirts before throwing them in the wash.
Also, I'd OP lives in a hard water area they might need to use more detergent.
They can also try chucking in isopropyl alcohol, that really works well
Isopropyl ? Really ? I have a big bottle of it for cleaning electronics but I had never thought of using it on clothes
A little white vinegar works well too.
* white vinegar!
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I also, despite being in good shape, sweat a ton. I honestly hate it, but there are much worse things to live with.
Anyways, I had the same pit stain problem as you. I found that it was my antiperspirant causing the problem. I switched away from an antiperspirant (which honestly wasn't really helping me sweat any less anyway) to a straight deodorant (Old Spice) and the problem went away.
I’m a big fat guy who sweats a lot. I’ve never cared about the sweat though only the smell. So my whole life I’ve used nothing but deodorant, NEVER antiperspirant.
I’ve never had problems with either pit stains, nor lingering odor. I’m pretty convinced that antiperspirant leads to more smell; I’m not saying I’m fresh as a daisy at all times, but even at my worst, my odor isn’t that bad, while drier people often stink to high heaven.
Getting in shape, all things being equal, makes you sweat more, not less, since you are training your body to sweat more in response to the greater thermic effect of more intense exertion.
Adding to this, It raises your metabolism so you burn hotter just generally during the day whilst doing nothing too
Well shit, time to get out of shape then. 😉
Being fat retains heat and causes sweating too so you have to be out of shape but thin.
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despite being in good shape, sweat a ton. I honestly hate it, but there are much worse things to live with.
I used to be this way, using a sauna daily massively reduced how much I sweat.
Really? I sweat so much quicker since going to a sauna regularly. Though it's nowhere near daily
Interesting! how often do you go?
I do daily, 85c for 20 minutes. The after about 2 months i noticeably sweat less out in the heat.
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The trick is not to wait until the end of the week to do it all during laundry day.
If your nice dress shirt got sweat on it during the day, best to wash it immediately when you get home.
My top tips:
Wash or at least rinse the garments as soon after getting them sweaty as you can.
Wash them with actually dirty clothes if possible. The dirt particles will absorb smell and act as an abrasive on the stains. If your clothes are generally too clean for this, use an oxy powder additive which will achieve the same effect.
Also: consider going without deodorant and antiperspirant and just use some isopropyl alcohol or similar to kill the bacteria in your armpits as needed; this results in less smell and less junk in your sweat to clean out of your shirts.
Lastly: wearing a technical shirt when working out will mean less sweat actually adhering to the fabric, making cleaning easier.
Quick question about isopropyl alcohol : how do you apply it uniformly to your armpit ? With a cloth ? Does it need to be drenched ? Or just scoop it with your hand ? Or with a water spray ? And how long does it last before you need to reapply ?
What are your current laundry methods, i.e., what sort of detergents do you use? Do you wash on warm or cold? Do you know the hardness of your water?
Most of the time when it comes to odor sticking on clothing related to exercise it's strongly related to the fibers of those cloths. The geometry of polyester fibers often used in athletic wear is known to hold on to oils and other body junk.
Generally, there are three factors that go into successfully washing clothing experiencing these problems.
- Adequate detergents. You want something with good surfactants to capture and lift away soils, and enzymes of the right types that will help break down difficult soils into smaller molecules that the surfactants can better manage.
- Temperature. Just as cold water will have a hard time washing away butter and oils from your dishes, cold water in your laundry is gonna have a more difficult time to wash away oils in your clothing. It's a common misconception that warm in your laundry is bad for clothes. In reality, in the US anyway, most warm settings on washing machines are only around 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot settings are usually barely reaching the 100 degree mark, so both of these are in line with your own body temperature as you're wearing the things. If the care tags on your garments say they can handle warm or hot washes, definitely do so. Things that may say cold can probably tolerate warm, too, given the temperature is really not that hot at all.
- Time. Surfactants and enzymes need time to work. If your wash time is brief, or you're using a speed wash setting on your washer, you may not be giving enough time to let the chemicals do their work.
In regards to detergents, in the US, probably the best thing you can get is powdered Tide or Gain. These products includes a good surfactant system, a complete enzyme package, and oxygen bleach all in one. You don't really need anything more than that.
If you're using liquids, there are more options but also limitations. Again, Tide is probably the best as far as surfactants go but all liquids are going to be missing the other components. Certain enzymes don't like to live in a solution with water so they are missing from almost all formulations. Oxygen bleach is activated by water so by definition it can't be in a liquid product. In these cases you can use a booster product. OxiClean is a common one for just the oxygen bleach but it lacks enzymes. There's another product called Biz that you can find at Walmart and Meijer stores for very cheap. It's like seven bucks and has all of the oxygen bleach and enzymes you need.
TL;DR: wash in warm water for a longer time, and add Biz booster powder to your liquid detergent.
I'm going to second the undershirts. They also prevent the wet spots on your good shirt.
Also, Old Spice, the blue gel stick not the powdery stuff, has been the only thing that actually keeps the sweating down.
I enjoyed the OS scent, used the white bars and got stains. Tried their blue gel and my arms break out in nasty rashes. Real bummer.
Sometimes I get the rash too. But at least they're dry rashes.
My advise is to wear undershirts. Even the tank top ones will make a big difference in keeping your shirts clean.
The Hyper Fixed podcast has an episode about this called "The Pits."
TL;DL (iirc) don't let stains set by letting dirty laundry sit for a long time is probably the most important. Don't use a dryer. Try different solutions to pre-treat (vinegar/baking soda+water/dish soap).
I'll give that a try. Thank you!
I don't know but im now going to read to see if anyone has good tips.
Wash stinky, sweaty, greasy clothes in hot, it helps dissolve those things. Add at least 1/2 cup baking soda to the drum (front or top loading), this cuts grease and smells. It also helps boost the detergent and does not ruin clothes. Wash super dirty clothes on a heavy cycle. If they still stink after that, you need to replace those clothes. Plastic clothes will eventually get nasty.
How does your washing machine work? A standard cycle with mine takes 3 1/2 hours, and after so much soaking at 30C, even my workout t-shirts smell fine. The detergent is standard aldi powder.
They're pretty basic. I live in a condo building so I use the little laundromat.
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Once I started making my own deodorant, which is surprisingly easy, my shirts stopped getting pitted out. There are a bunch of recipes on YouTube and you can buy empty deodorant twist up containers. Bit of a pain but it works.
I could solve this issue for myself by dampening the shirts pre wash and massaging in hard soap (That's what wikipedia claims "Kernseife" is called in English. I hope it's righ lol) Then you let your clothes sit for 20 minutes or so, before putting them in the washing machine. I don't think I rinse it out. The mashine will do it anyways.
Why not exercise in a vest/tank top and let your armpits breath?
Don't wear shirts with anything other than 100% cotton.
I can't get a shirt with even a little bit of polyester to not stink after washing multiple times.
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